Did anybody ever find floppy disks annoying?

[Phiber]

I also had a C64+datassette-combo first back in the day, after I bought an 1541-II with my hard-earned summerjob money I never had to look back at using C2N and the abysmal load times.. And it also was painful to miss a lot of games before the diskdrive just because they weren't onefile-games.. After 3 years I switched to A500, but never really got annoyed with diskswapping.. It sorta came natural after all the hard times I had to endure before.. Cutting holes to DSDD-disks and flipping them over..

[TCD]

Originally Posted by KONEY

I love floppies! Anyway I always had HDs on my Amigas!

Now that's the spirit

[coze]

I'm off the breed who migrated from c64 casette to amiga 500 floppies ... and when I first used them omg it was such a blessing ! I used to kiss my floppies and go to bed with them !

sometime later, swapping disks for each level in eye of the beholder became tiring, so I was eyeing my PC buddies' HDDs with envy ... Unfortunately a HDD for my A500 was out of question, cause they were ungodly expensive ... Now though, I got five different side cars for my A500

[Photon]

Floppy loading time was never a problem. The big exception was ofc multi-disk games. But then again, even if the loader was twice as fast and had supported "1 disk in each drive", it would have been just as annoying.

As a "for real" reference in the modern world, on my C2D 3GHz+HDD from 2007, loading Half-Life 2 takes about a minute (haven't timed it). Between levels probably 5-25 seconds. So, loading times are still here


Very early on (1987) disks cost $3 a piece and were absolute crap quality. In a 10-pack, there was always one disk that was bad. Maxell. Goldstar. But soon Asian factories made "noname" bulk packs that were better in quality, and that dropped the price and all were happy. Except the floppy producers that put their logo on crap expensive disks.

Writing a bad track on a crappy disk or a failed write would result in a "GNIARR GNIARR" sound when the disk would be read later. This was called the dreaded "read/write error". We all had "r/w error-anxiety". Some games had loaders that emulated this sound, making the gamer go "oh no!" and be certain the game would fail loading

The sound comes from the loader detecting a bad checksum and stepping all the way to track 0 and back to the bad track for another try. Since most bad tracks were either on the first or last tracks, it would result in this sound.


Just like the "loading" title in any modern game, a floppy loader could be a reward after a completed level, or give a feeling of anticipation... "wow, he's loading a LOT of stuff, something cool must be coming up..."

For me, the calm "chug-chug" sound is very relaxing, and load times are rarely (never) a problem. There's something to be said for flipping through games and just shove the game you want in the drive

[DH]

IMO floppies were blisteringly fast compared to cassette tapes, although some cassette tapes (i.e. C64 stuff) had some cool loaders added for whilst you were waiting for them to fully load in. An example of these were obviously the Ocean Loader ones, that played a cool tune while you waited Plenty of time for coffee, beer, cigarette and a bit of nookie on the side too.

When using the floppies on the Amiga, you may of waited a while for things to load but for me, this was an excuse to light up a cigarette, so time was irrelevant

Just like anything, you get used to the speeds and now things run immensely faster, I still find myself twiddling my thumbs waiting for stuff to load in, so everything is relative to what you use. A Spectrum and C64 will take, say, 2 mins to load a game which is no problem 'cause I expect that, an Amiga will take, say 30 to 60 seconds, once again I expect that, a peecee will take 0.000043878626459 milliseconds to load a game and funnily enough I expect it to be faster And this is probably the same with others too. When something else comes along which is even faster, the 0.000043878626459 milliseconds load time I will expect and so on and so on

btw. The 0.000043878626459 milliseconds load time is just a joke as in reality I couldn't really give an accurate load time as it all depends on what you want to run.

[Dastardly]

I never had a problem with Amiga load times. Only excessive disk swapping like with Monkey Island 2 used to annoy me, but even then, not enough to put me off

[adolescent]

Let's put things into perspective. PCs weren't born with HDs just like Amigas weren't born with HDs. For instance on my 1985 PCjr I had the choice of floppy or cartridge. Floppies were cheaper, easier to find, and you could copy and share things with friends. So no. I never found floppies to be annoying (until I got my first HD at least).

Originally Posted by switchblade

and so I've been learning more about the home computer that had never been in America (because I've never heard of the Amiga until last year).

Just because you hadn't heard about them didn't mean they didn't exist.

[Sensi]

Originally Posted by Predseda

It depends how clever the disk routines were. Sometimes I ENJOYED the loading from floppies, with all those specific sounds. Some games you could recognise just for their disk loading sounds (good examples are Lemmings or Powermonger). I can say I really miss em now, when I play everything through WHD load. But some games, with a lot of diskswapping, were really annoying.

Same with speccy games, I am sure I would recognize Abu Simbel Profanation after all those years.
I remember SOTB 3 on A500 playing in the night, it was so loud

Originally Posted by Dastardly

I never had a problem with Amiga load times. Only excessive disk swapping like with Monkey Island 2 used to annoy me, but even then, not enough to put me off

MI2 was annoying but almost every Sierra game was hell.

[rare_j]

Loding from tape on the spectrum was not only very slow, it was unrelaible.
So Amiga floppies were great back in the day.
It's all relative.
Today, I can't stand to wait for floppy disks.

[Sensi]

Originally Posted by rare_j

Loding from tape on the spectrum was not only very slow, it was unrelaible.
So Amiga floppies were great back in the day.
It's all relative.
Today, I can't stand to wait for floppy disks.

I used Denon 90, Basf 90 and few Agfa 90 MCs for backuping games and I dont remember having problem with loading games. Around 2004 (thirteen years after I sold speccy!) I found some cassettes and tried to load some games using ancient walkman and speccy emulator, every single game was loaded with no problem
In my point of view they are very reliable. Maybe it depends on cassettes or cassette player you are using.

The cassettes which I found not very reliable: AudioStar (but only later types, friend of mine used only AudioStar MCs and didnt have problems at all), some types of Sony MCs, Toshibas. Maxell MCs (white blue ones) were very good too.

[switchblade]

Originally Posted by adolescent

Let's put things into perspective. PCs weren't born with HDs just like Amigas weren't born with HDs. For instance on my 1985 PCjr I had the choice of floppy or cartridge. Floppies were cheaper, easier to find, and you could copy and share things with friends. So no. I never found floppies to be annoying (until I got my first HD at least).



Just because you hadn't heard about them didn't mean they didn't exist.

I never got a PC until like 1992, and even then it was one of those clones. 386 clocked at 20 MHZ, a 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drive, built-in VGA, and a Sound Blaster PRO with that annoying PC Speaker connected right to it.... But at least it had a hard drive! I also remember buying a 2X speed CD-ROM unit, and screwing around with it from time to time. My floppy drives and that slow-ass CD unit was my only experience of those load times, I guess.

BTW, I'm not THAT old, compared to you geezers out here.

[DH]

@Switchblade
Ah! So you wont remember using these things then

[switchblade]

Originally Posted by DemonHellraiser

@Switchblade
Ah! So you wont remember using these things then

Assuming I don't end up having a mid-life crisis anytime soon. >_>

[TCD]

Originally Posted by switchblade

BTW, I'm not THAT old, compared to you geezers out here.

Geezers eh? Watch your tongue young man (though I doubt you beat Sensi )
Like blackcornflake (and Einstein ) said, it's relative to where you come from and having a HD in the first place surely doesn't help falling in love with floppies You should try Alien Breed from floppy and wait for the 'Insert disk 2' speech. Maybe that changes your mind

[Sensi]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Geezers eh? Watch your tongue young man (though I doubt you beat Sensi )

Watch your tongue old man

[DH]

Could you imagine not having tapes/floppies or HDD's, solely relying on computer punch cards

Wonder what our game rooms would look like if that was the case Well they wouldn't really be rooms, they'd be more like a huge hall with libraries of cards with a small desk in one corner

[switchblade]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Geezers eh? Watch your tongue young man (though I doubt you beat Sensi )
Like blackcornflake (and Einstein ) said, it's relative to where you come from and having a HD in the first place surely doesn't help falling in love with floppies You should try Alien Breed from floppy and wait for the 'Insert disk 2' speech. Maybe that changes your mind

"Git off mah lawn, you dern kids!".... or something like that.

I wasn't always occupied with my HDD and CD drive. I do remember using my floppy drive at times, but never really for gaming (unless the entire game was compressed on one floppy disk, then I could play it from there).

Being 22 yrs. old does count as a "dern kid". >_>

[Predseda]

I love this thread!

[coze]

Originally Posted by Sensi

Watch your tongue old man

watch your thong young ... erm nevermind

[DH]

I still use floppies today

Did I just say that Well, the floppy is still a very useful and versatile piece of media, for me it has saved my life on my peecee many times, especially the latest piece of software I got. I have several floppies with HDD tools on them, which can't be put on anything else, so they have become an invaluable collection of tools I'll never get rid of. Floppies forever